


(Sorry) I Could Not Travel Both

by Sandrine Shaw (Sandrine)



Category: Fringe
Genre: F/M, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-16
Updated: 2012-02-16
Packaged: 2017-10-31 06:46:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/341137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sandrine/pseuds/Sandrine%20Shaw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-"Entrada". She feels like an intruder in her own world, like she came back <i>wrong</i> somehow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(Sorry) I Could Not Travel Both

Home. Such a foreign concept, now. 

Olivia goes to work every day, she shares jokes with her team, smiles at all the right moments, does her job as well as she ever did. She lives in an apartment that, just a few weeks ago, was inhabited by a stranger wearing her face. She wears clothes that she swears still smell foreign even though she's washed them a dozen times already. She kisses a boyfriend who never knew that he kissed another woman not too long ago.

Every night, she steps out of the shower and looks at herself in the mirror, into the face of someone she doesn't quite know. She feels like an intruder in her own world, like she came back _wrong_ somehow. Like something from over there latched onto her, has crawled deep under her skin and is now part of her like a parasite she cannot shake off, a cancer growth that is slowly taking over everything she used to be.

It doesn't matter that she dyes her hair red and gets her tattoo back. It feels like she's dressing up as someone else, like – even now, _even here_ – she's an imposter.

Lucky for her, she's good at this. She knows how to fake being someone she's not. 

Except now she's faking being herself. It's harder than pretending to be someone else.

* * *

The official story is that Colonel Broyles died in the line of duty while on a top secret mission his team doesn't have clearance to know about. Olivia isn't sure why the Secretary tells her the truth – if it's because he trusts her, or possibly because he _doesn't_. If, maybe, it's a warning: this is what happens to traitors.

All she knows is that Phillip Broyles – a man she has trusted her life with on more occasions than she can count, who she knew to be loyal to their cause like no other – has helped the other Olivia get back to her own universe. Betrayal, the Secretary calls it. He says that the other Olivia manipulated the Colonel and that he helped her for sentimental reasons. 

Olivia doesn't object. She doesn't tell the Secretary that he's wrong, that this can't be the whole truth. A man like Broyles wouldn't risk everything to save the life of a single person. If Broyles helped the other her, it's because he thought in doing so, he'd achieve something bigger. 

Olivia doesn't know why, but she knows that Broyles somehow must have trusted her doubleganger to fix their universe instead of destroying it. Having been on the other side, she understands. Over there, they don't act like the enemy. They don't act like people set out to destroy her world. If the other Olivia told Broyles that she will find a way to fix it, chances are that she genuinely believes she can. 

Except Olivia isn't Broyles. She might believe in the other side's willingness to save them all, but not in their ability to follow through. She's always been the realist to Broyles' idealist.

Unfortunately, she's right.

* * *

The two universes start clashing more and more frequently as the fabric that holds each together and keeps them apart unravels. Buildings disappear. Matter becomes instable. More Fringe events. More quarantines. More people die.

Olivia doesn't want the other universe to be torn apart. She doesn't want all those people to die: Peter, and Walter, and Astrid, and Agent Broyles, and Danny the guy from the coffee shop where she went every morning. But if it's a matter of them or her universe – if her mother's life is at stake, or Frank's, or Charlie's and Lincoln's – then she knows whose side she's on. Even if she still wakes up disoriented in the mornings, expecting to find Peter beside her and ever so slightly disappointed when it's Frank. Even if the person in the mirror hasn't stopped looking at her like she doesn't belong.

The cortexiphan experiments are coming along well, and when the Secretary tells her that they're going to send her over there to retrieve a part of his machine, she tells herself that the reason her heart is beating faster is that finally, she's going to be able to do something important again.

* * *

It's different this time. She doesn't have to pretend to be someone else. In fact, for the first time in over a year, she doesn't have to pretend at all. She's just an agent on a mission where no one knows her – it doesn't matter if she's not acting like the Olivia Dunham people know. She doesn't have to try her best to be the person she used to be, or a woman she could never quite grasp.

She dyes her hair brown and cuts it to a short, messy bob. Then she buys a cup of coffee and goes on about her business. 

She blends in, comfortable in her own skin at last.

* * *

When she's uncovered the tiny fluorescent plate she came here for, she sends a message back home:

_Retrieval successful. Awaiting further instructions._

'Awaiting extraction' is what she was going to write, but she wouldn't mind not quite returning yet, if they have something else for her to do. 

In the end, it doesn't matter. She sits in front of the typewriter and waits, but there is no reply. Nor is there any the next day, or the one after.

When she starts to get worried, she fills the tub in her hotel room with water, shuts the lights down and submerges herself, trying to return on her own. It almost works, and for a second she thinks that she's going to make it, but then it's like she's walking into a brick wall. It's like someone went and built a barrier that stops her from going home.

At first, she panics.

Then she realizes that maybe this isn't a bad thing. She buys the papers and carefully scans them for news that could hint at Fringe events, signs that this universe is collapsing. There's nothing. 

She keeps looking, and she keeps trying to cross over, and she keeps trying to send messages, but as weeks go by, it's becoming routine more than anything.

* * *

The universes have stopped colliding.

There's no way back home for her.

It takes her a while to really accept those as facts. As long as she can remember, her universe has always been in danger. She was very young when the first events hit them. She cannot even remember a time before that, when there wasn't the threat of danger and mayhem in the air everywhere. That it's over now, that her people are safe, just like that, is hard to believe. 

Somehow, this is harder to come to terms with than the fact that she's stuck here. A lot of the shifters have adapted over time, some have gone native. There's no reason why she can't do the same. (She already has, even if she's not ready to acknowledge that yet.)

* * *

"She died, you know," one of the shifters she's meeting with regularly to stay up to date tells her out of the blue. They were talking about the way the Fringe division over here was handling the increase of collisions when he abruptly changes the subject, and it takes Olivia a moment to get it.

"Who?" she asks, still smiling over something he said before. But even as she speaks the word, she realizes what he must be talking about, and the smile freezes. 

"The other you. Their Olivia Dunham. She died four months ago, trying to save some kid from what should have been a quarantine zone."

Of course she did, Olivia thinks. Of course she would throw her life away to save someone who didn't even matter and should have been nothing but collateral damage. 

That's why she ultimately failed in convincing people that she was the other Olivia: because she'd never be that selfless, or that stupid, or that reckless with her own life. Because she puts her mission before everything, whereas the other Olivia puts people before everything. Maybe that makes the other Olivia a better person. 

But then, the other Olivia is dead now and she's alive.

* * *

Her shifter friend gets her a passport. Olivia Daniels, the name on it reads. She stares at it for half an hour and tries to decide if this makes it better or worse. It's like making it official that this isn't a temporary arrangement; that she's here for good.

She moves from the hotel into a small apartment and gets a job with a private security contractor. 

She lets her hair grow long again, but leaves it a deep dark brown that holds no shade of red or blonde. The woman in the mirror is starting to look a little more familiar now.

* * *

One foggy morning in November, she visits Olivia Dunham's grave. Her own name, white on black marble. _Beloved sister and friend_ , the grave stone says, and it takes Olivia a second to remember that her sister lived, in this universe.

"I'm not you," she says aloud, as if that would ward off the chill she feels looking at the grave. 

"I'm sorry for pretending to be you." She smiles wryly. "I suppose I messed us both up for good, didn't I?"

She traces the name ( _her_ name) with her finger before she leaves.

* * *

It's supposed to be a one-time thing, but she comes back. Irregularly, but frequently enough to call it a habit. She brings flowers sometimes.

* * *

She should have expected Peter. Maybe she did. Maybe she was subconscious hoping that they'd run into each other.

But still, when she finds him crouching at the grave, she's rooted to the spot. For a long moment that stretches until it almost bursts with tension, all she does is stand there and stare at the back of his head, the familiar curve of his spine. He hasn't turned around yet, hasn't spotted her, and she knows she needs to leave.

She turns and strides off, ducking her head. When she's in her car, she draws a shaky breath and tells herself that she's relieved that he didn't detect her.

But a week later, she comes back, and a fortnight after that. And again and again, and of course their paths eventually cross again. 

This time, it's him who finds her at the grave. She hears him approach, footfalls steady on the pebble stones. Then silence as he hesitates.

She takes a deep breath and braces herself, turning towards him with a smile on her face. 

"Hello, Peter."

His expression gives nothing away. She expected anger or shock, maybe the tell-tale pallor of someone who thinks they're seeing a ghost, but he looks at her the same way he looked when he first uncovered her true identity, a lifetime ago. 

"I thought I saw you, before," he says. "But then I thought maybe I was just... imagining things. Seeing ghosts."

His voice, like his expression, is unreadable. 

Olivia tries to maintain her smile, but she feels the corners of her mouth twitching under pressure. "No. No ghost, just me."

Peter nods. He watches her like a hawk, suspiciously, like he's expecting her to draw a gun on him any second, or pull out a syringe and stab him. 

"When did you get here?"

"A year or so ago?" Olivia says, as if she didn't know the exact date, down to the very minute she arrived. "They sent me on a mission. When it was time to go back, I couldn't."

"Yeah, that. We sealed the rifts. There's no way for anything to cross over now, in either direction."

"I figured." Still, it's good to hear it confirmed. Her smile is a bit more real now, despite the awkwardness of the situation. "That's… good. No way for the universes to collide and mutual destroy each other now."

"No, they're safe. We're safe." Then, as an afterthought, he adds, "Sorry you got stranded here." 

She knows he means it, that despite all she did to him, he regrets tearing her away from her home because he thinks he knows what it's like. Olivia shrugs. "It's ok. My job was to do everything to make sure my people are safe. It's enough to know they are. And it's not so bad here."

He gives her an odd look, but when he speaks again, it's only to tell her that he has to bring her in for a debrief. She doesn't object.

* * *

If she thought her conversation with Peter was awkward, it has nothing on the interrogation at the Fringe division. Broyles glares at her. Astrid stares. Walter gives her a wide smile before he seems to realize that she's not their Olivia.

Everyone treats her like an enemy agent that's been captured after a peace treaty was already signed. No one seems to know what to do with her or how to act around her.

"I was trying to save my universe. My people," she says.

"At the expense of ours," Broyles counters, and his voice is hard.

She refuses to feel guilty about that. "Yes. And if you had the choice, if you had believed that it was you or us, that there was no other way, don't tell me you wouldn't have done the same."

He doesn't have an answer for that.

"And now?" he asks.

She plays with a small pencil she picked up from the desk and wonders if they know that if she wanted to, she could use it to incapacitate Broyles and the two guards and be out of this room within ten minutes. 

"Now? Now the imminent danger is over. Your people saw to that, which I must admit, is more than I had expected. I hold no grudge against any of you, if that's what you're asking, Agent Broyles. If anything, I'm grateful."

In the end, they make her sign a nondisclosure agreement and swear her to secrecy. They legitimize her ID because bureaucracy demands that she becomes a real legal person if she's to stay here, and that's it. She's free to go, out into the great wide open.

* * *

The first thing she does is go get a coffee at Danny's, whose face lights up when he sees her. "Oh hey! I haven't seen _you_ around in a long while," he greets her.

Olivia shrugs with a smile. "I was away for a while."

"You still drink your coffee black, two sugars?"

"Sure." She wonders if his special barista memory – if he remembers all his regulars' orders, or if she somehow left an impression.

When he hands her the coffee, he asks, "So, is it good to be home?"

Home. For a short moment, the word makes her feel anxious. She doesn't know what this place is, but it's not home. Not yet. She doesn't really miss her own universe, though, and she does like it here. The people here, they have this saying about home not being a place but people. While she understands the concept, she doesn't think it applies to her. She's always been fairly self-contained. There isn't anyone in her life she's been close enough to associate the concept of home with them. She loves her mum, she loved Frank, in a way she did love Peter, but she doesn't _need_ them in her life to feel comfortable.

She pushes the thought away, realizing that Danny's waiting for an answer. "I don't know yet. Let me get back to you on that."

He laughs, even though she wasn't joking. When she's almost out of the door, he calls after her, "But I bet the coffee there wasn't as good as it's here!"

_If only you knew_ , she thinks, but she keeps smiling all the way back to her office.

* * *

A rainy Wednesday evening in January, three months after their graveside encounter, Peter turns up at her door. It's coincidence that she opens in a bathrobe, her hair wet, and she isn't sure what throws her off the most: the sudden sense of _déjà-vu_ or the fact that Peter is even here in the first place.

"Peter. Hi! I— Come in. I promise there's no dead body in the bathroom this time."

She didn't mean to say that, she was just thinking it and somehow the words must have slipped out unbidden. 

Peter gives her a sharp look, then shakes his head. "I'm not going to ask."

He's smiling, though, and he kicks off his shoes and steps inside, so the unintentional revelation of the previous presence of a corpse in Olivia's bathroom doesn't seen to bother him too much. But then, of course, he's used to dealing with weird shit, and so is she.

But there's weird, and there's weird, and then there's Peter Bishop standing in your apartment looking a little awkward and out of place and saying, "I brought Chinese takeout. And I _really_ hope that back when you said you liked those little spring rolls, you weren't just pretending to like them, because I got you two boxes."

– and Olivia can't help it, she just has to laugh out loud because the whole thing is too bizarre. And maybe, if she focuses on the strangeness of it, then perhaps she can hide how pleased – no, more than that – how _relieved_ she is about Peter's surprise visit. They hadn't seen each other since he walked her into the FBI building, they hadn't spoken or otherwise been in touch. She never sat down and thought, _I'll probably never see Peter again_ , because she didn't like to ponder eventualities, but she certainly hadn't counted on it happening. 

And here he was, in her apartment with four boxes of takeout, taking a chance.

She could have had other plans. It's not like she's living the life of a hermit just because this isn't her universe. She has friends here. Some of the shifters. Workmates. People she randomly met. She goes out sometimes, a drink after work or a coffee with a friend during her lunch-break. It's just a coincidence that she's free tonight. 

For a moment, she considers telling him that, but then she just laughs softly and says, "You're lucky, then. I really did like them."

* * *

Olivia doesn't ask Peter why he came to her that night. She doesn't need to, because she remembers the date inscribed on Olivia Dunham's gravestone.

Later, when the food is gone, she doesn't tell him to leave either, even though she thinks maybe she should. 

Perhaps, if she were a better person, she'd sent him home. But she isn't, and she doesn't.

* * *

Unexpectedly, Peter comes back. He turns up at her apartment or he calls and asks her out for drinks.

It's not some sordid secret kind of affair. Sometimes, they don't do anything but sit on her couch, her head on his shoulder, and watch a movie together. Sometimes, they just talk, about the freakishness of his latest case, or how annoying her clients are, or about some scientific breakthrough Walter made. But there are topics they stay clear off, most notably everything _back then_. 

He never mentions it, and she doesn't know where to begin to say _I'm sorry_ , so she doesn't.

Something else she never says: _I'm not her_. 

She wants to say it. She certainly thinks it, often enough. 

But she believes that she lost the right to object to Peter pretending that she's his Olivia the moment she first kissed him and pretended to be the other her.

It's only fair.

* * *

Peter is telling some story about how Walter mixed himself some highly experimental recreational drug that apparently made him hug Broyles a lot, propose to Astrid and paint Jean blue, but still left him lucid enough to solve their latest case.

"— and then he took Nina's hand and..."

Peter has a way of making it all sound hilarious, even if it was probably not exactly an easy day for everyone at the Fringe division who wasn't on a drug-induced high, and Olivia is laughing so hard that her stomach is starting to hurt, which in turn in setting Peter off.

"Did you ever try it?" she asks later, when they've both calmed down a little.

"What? One of Walter's crazy drugs? No, thanks, I rather like my mind clear and sharp."

Olivia smirks at him. "Oh, come on, live a little! Maybe not during a case, but you could bring us some for the weekend. Then we'll have until Monday to get the marriage annulled or get the blue paint off."

Peter just looks at her and then, suddenly, laughs loudly. It's deep and pleasant and she likes the sound of it, but she's also confused about the source of his amusement because, really, she's funny – but she's not _that_ funny.

"What?"

"Nothing, it's just— I don't know how I could ever think you're Olivia. Our— This universe's Olivia, that is. You're nothing like her."

She feels the smile dropping from her face at his words. It's a first time either of them mentioned _her_ since they met at the grave. No, actually, that's not right. They didn't talk about his Olivia then either. This is the first time. 

"I'm sorry," she says. It's awkward and inadequate, but it's all she has.

Peter blinks. "For what?"

_That I can't be her for you_ , she thinks, but the words won't come over her lips. He seems to understand anyway, because he frowns that unhappy little frown of his and reaches for her, pulling her in. 

"I want to be with you, Olive, not with her. She was a wonderful person and I loved her, but maybe there's a reason why we never got together."

Her instinct is to laugh it off and tell him _yes, because I messed things up for you two_ , but then she remembers sitting together over a coffee, what seems like an eternity ago, and Peter telling her, _It's like you're a completely different person. I like it._

She takes a deep breath and allows herself to relax against Peter and enjoy the assurance his embrace gives her. 

"Okay." It sounds tentative and unsure, so unlike her, so she tries again. "Okay." This time, she is smiling. This time, she means it.

* * *

It's a morning in June when she gets up before sunrise, sneaking out of the covers so she won't wake Peter. She has a meeting with a client early this morning, and she wants to go on a run and grab a coffee before that. Peter made plans for dinner at a restaurant downtown, but she should probably try to get some grocery shopping done before the weekend. She's in the bathroom, brushing her teeth, and she's just going through her schedule for the day in her head when the _normalcy_ of the situation hits her.

She still has a job where people shoot at her on a regular basis, so maybe it's not quite what other people would call normal, but the Amber and the cortexaphan and the awareness of living in a world that's coming apart at its seams seem like memories of a foreign life. 

She brushes the steam from the mirror and looks at her reflection. For the very first time since she first crossed universes, it's not a stranger who looks back at her. 

Maybe this is what home is, after all: a place where you can be yourself. 

She smiles and doesn't clear the mirror when it fogs up again, remembering to tell Danny later that – yes, he was right, it is good to be home.

* * *

End.


End file.
